8 Real Grade Schools That Went Completely Insane

Teaching is hard. Kids are tough to deal with, the pay is bad and parents are always complaining. We understand that, and salute our teachers for the crucial job that they do.

Well, the ones who haven't gone utterly insane anyway. Apparently quite a few of them have...

#8. South Oak Cliff High - Student Cage Matches

Teaching proper conflict resolution to the more troubled students can be tricky. These are kids who let their fists do the talking, and the only word they know is punch. But we do know one thing: It's probably not a good idea to let them settle their differences in school-sponsored illegal bare-knuckled cage matches, like South Oak Cliff High did.

Reportedly, a number of teachers from the Dallas South Oak Cliff High let their more violent pupils into a makeshift Thunderdome in the boys' locker room and left them there until only one was able to walk back out again.

The boy with the dwarf on his head usually won.

Testimonies claim that the entire staff was in on it and that these practices went down for more than two years, between 2003 and 2005.

The entire faculty completely denies the allegations, especially the principal, who claims "ain't nothing to comment on," though considering his bizarre past (including staging his own kidnapping and fatally shooting an old guy) we're not sure why Texas put him in charge of kids instead of making him principal of the exercise yard at the county prison.

It was probably due to some kind of communication breakdown.

Since then, more reports from whistleblowers have surfaced, claiming that the staged matches were "gladiator-style entertainment for the staff," meaning that this whole silliness could probably have been avoided if the principal simply bought a TV set for the teacher's lounge.

#7. Blackminster Middle School Plays Murder

We've been hearing for years how schools only teach useless facts and hone skills that have no application outside their walls. Well, a certain school in the UK recently decided to change that.

Hogwarts?

What is the one thing that all modern kids have to eventually deal with? That's right: MURDER. Wait, what? Oops, no time for follow-up question we have already put in motion the genius alternative lesson where we fake-murder the kids beloved teacher in front of their very eyes!

Sometime around March this year, children ages 10 to 13 at the Blackminster Middle School in Evesham were rushed into the playground for what they assumed was a fire drill, when a masked gunman appeared out of nowhere and "shot dead" a popular science teacher. While the rest of the school faculty (completely in on the "joke") rushed to his aid to perform hopeless CPR and shake their fists at the God who abandoned them, the students reacted less than favorably, suffering panic attacks and shellshock that will scar them for the remainder of their troubled youth.

Damn. The British D.A.R.E. is hardcore.

It took a whole 10 traumatizing minutes before the staff revealed that the incident was faked in order to set up some kind of bizarre Clue-style scenario, "to teach Year 8 pupils how to investigate, collect facts and analyse evidence".

All they had to do was look for the paw prints.

More troubling, maybe, is the spectacular degree to which the staff failed to learn a lesson from the whole thing. The head teacher, Terry Holland, shrugged the whole thing off and quipped, "It was one of the more popular teachers who played the victim, I don't think there would have been as much concern if it was one or two of the others." We can at least grade him a B+ in missing the point.

#6. Itawamba Agricultural High School's Non-Lesbian Prom

Back in the prudish golden age of March 2010, the Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi faced the greatest moral crisis in its history: lesbians.

NNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!

The gender-role-bending catastrophe emerged when a student named Constance McMillan declared that she wanted to bring a female date to the school prom while wearing a tuxedo!

Clearly, the school board was forced to intervene to prevent such insanity, lest up would become down, and sandwiches would leap from student lunchboxes to devour their human oppressors. After throwing a hissy fit and threatening to cancel the entire prom altogether, they finally decided to compromise by organizing a fake prom for the gay kids, far away from the normal students.

The fun they had missed.

We don't mean that the school sent the couple to a sham address in the middle of a haunted swamp or anything. We mean that together with the parents, they rented out an entire country club, stocked it with punch and other refreshments, put a few teachers inside as chaperones, and then only invited the lesbian couple.

To bolster the numbers, they also sent the word out to the school's population of disabled students. Because you don't want to be discriminatory with your discrimination policy.

All of this went down while the rest of the school partied at a secret location, without any queer kids making a mockery of the proud and noble tradition of the high school prom.

No gays would taint the spiked punch this night.

And thus the school faculty could pat each other on the back content with the knowledge that, while homosexuality might exist, at least there wasn't any that they knew of going on in that one particular building that one particular night. Money well spent!

#5. Seven Hills West Public School's Kid Cage

Generally, you can forgive a school for being zealously overprotective of pupils with special needs, especially when you're living in Australia, where every animal, vegetable and mineral yearns to murder you and your entire family. Following that logic to its stupidest extreme, there is the Seven Hills West Public Schools in Sydney, which puts autistic students in a cage at lunchtimes.

"All the cages are taken. You stay here."

OK, maybe "cage" isn't the right word, because cages at least keep you safe from the elements and dive-bombing koalas. The special ed reserve at Seven Hills West is really more of a cow pen; a fenced area with a bench and a dirt floor outside the school building, where the handicapped students are rounded up each recess.

There's plenty of room to run around and all the grass they can eat.

This autistic detention center was allegedly implemented due to fears that some of those kids might venture off school grounds and, presumably, get run over by a gang of junk-clad gasoline thieves.

Australia.

There of course has been some opposition to the Seven Hills Free-range Project from the kids' parents and anyone who isn't a horrible human being, but dammit, the safety of the children is at stake here. How else are the teachers supposed to keep an eye on literally a dozen additional students each lunch break? If you have any better ideas Mr. Brainy Trousers, the school board would love to hear them. All schools cage their students, right?